


Letters from old friends

by qwertysweetea



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins Movies)
Genre: F/M, Feelings Realization, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Jealousy, Light Angst, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Silence of the Lambs, Reminiscing, Stockholm Syndrome, Understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 12:38:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14769782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwertysweetea/pseuds/qwertysweetea
Summary: Years went between contacts. Calligraphic writing and lightly perfumed paper, and Clarice felt like she was being plunged headfirst back into her old life... the days where Lecter consumed every thought in her head and spurned every action.After the third, she made an effort to find a certain drunkard in Florida. If there was anyone else who could possibly help her understand the raging storm of thought and feeling inside her over Lecter then it was Will Graham.Clarice visits Will and finds out she isn't the only one still receiving letters. Both realise their feelings aren't quite so singular, or quite so weakened by time.





	Letters from old friends

**Author's Note:**

> Put it up. Took it down. Rewrote. Put it back up... eventually.
> 
> I really just want Will to have soft, healthy, platonic friendships with the Hannibal ladies.

Years went between contacts, enough time for him to become irrelevant in the day-to-day running of her life, until she woke up to a postcard or letter postmarked from all over Europe and the Americas, two or three years after the last. Calligraphic writing and lightly perfumed, and Clarice felt like she was being plunged headfirst back into her old life, before retirement… the days where Lecter consumed every thought in her head and spurned every action.

They didn’t stop after she moved. The next one, two years and eight months after the last, landed on the top step of her town home. Her skin prickled with the thought that he’d been there to drop it off himself, taking a long, judging look at her life before disappearing into obscurity again.

After the third she made an effort to find a certain drunkard in Florida. If there was anyone else who could possibly help her understand the raging storm of thought and feeling inside her over Lecter then it was Will Graham.

There was a chance she could have the door slammed in her face, much more of a chance of that than any other alternative that flicked through her head on the flight over. And what did she do then? She goes back to her early retirement, living a moderately normal if not a little mundane existence until the next one shows up and reignites everything in her she thought she'd left behind; living in fear and a type of twisted hope that she’ll open her front door to him one day.

Graham was easy to track down, considering everything, in the same way she supposed she was easy to track down. He wasn’t living under an assumed identity and his family connections were weak but not non-existence, like she’d been lead to believe when speaking of him years before with Crawford. Finding an address was easier than trying to book the plane tickets online.

As it turned out, Graham wasn’t interested in talking any more than he was of tolerating her presence when she first saw him en route to his home, walking back home with a loaf of bread and a six-pack under his arm. He stared at the hand she extended out to him and then stared at her like one would the sun, through squinted eyes with a grimace. Clarice could understand that; looking at him finally, face-to-face, she realised she’d gotten away lightly.

Going on fifty now, he looked like life had been as unkind to him as it had. He looked like he had never got comfortable with the gnarled flesh of his face and looked continuously over his shoulder like he expected him to appear with their combined presence. People didn’t survive Hannibal Lecter but they had, that had to be significant and Will genuinely thought that it was.

Eventually, but with very little prompting, Clarice was let into his home and a beer, uncomfortably warm, was placed in her hand when she once again offered it to him. It was clear to Clarice that he wanted the company almost as much as he wanted to be away from it.

“Why are you here?”

Clarice contemplated her answer, mouth open as though to speak.

“-Because, I didn't need your crap excuse for an introduction to know you've come to talk about Lecter. Wherever you've come from, you've wasted your time. I'm going to tell you the same thing I tell every budget tabloid journalist or third-year psychology student that comes to my door asking questions about him, us, where to find him, why he di-"

“Do you get letters?” She jumped in.

At that, Will froze, drink most of the way to his lips and eyes staring off somewhere behind her. When he seemed to draw himself back to reality, he did so by taking another mouthful of his drink. “When did you get the last one?”

“Two months ago.” She mumbled, taking a swig of the flat-liquid out of her own bottle. The glass he’d provided remained on the table.

With that he stood and left the room, coming back a few minutes later with a couple of letters she could have mistaken for her own. Her chest ached with something she didn’t want to acknowledge was jealousy; whatever it was, it must have been painted all over her face.

Will let out a dry chuckle, showing the characteristic sarcasm she’s heard about so much from Crawford. “Yeah…” he started, nodding. Half a smile spread across his face and Clarice couldn’t help but think it was probably very charming when he had the ability to smile fully. “…that racing feeling in your chest doesn’t go, you just learn to attribute new meaning to it.”

It shouldn’t have surprised Clarice that Will Graham could use a word like ‘attribute’ accurately in a sentence, and yet looking at the state of him now, it did. At one point he was highly intelligent and perceptive; he still was, she had to remind herself. No amount of alcohol could take that away.

“What do you attribute to it?” She questioned.

“Dread.” He answered within a beat. Rehearsed. He’d obviously put plenty of thought into it before now. Will shook the letters in his hand, urging Clarice to take them like they were burning his fingers.

He had more than she did. Some were starting to look darker with age and the postage date on them indicated that yes, in fact, a few of them were written before she had first met Lecter. One every few years, simple and neat, covered in postage stamps from all over the world. If they didn’t smell like dust and stale smoke from years of being sat in Will’s kitchen draw then she imagined they would have still smelled of that light perfume hers did.

The oldest was the most tattered, the fold mark looking delicate like it had been unfolded and folded over and over again. Short and sweet, Lecter wishing him a speedy recovery and hoping he wasn’t too ugly. Clarice would put money on those first few years of Will’s life being Hell on earth, a continuous loop of self-doubt and loathing, reading over the words and wondering if he’d made the right decision. She had. Sometimes she still did but then again she was only nine years in; Will must have been going on fifteen.

The rest of the letters sat crisp, barely touched besides being opened.

“He doesn’t know where I am.” Will contributed, after a few moments of silence. “He could find out but he hadn’t. Knows he wouldn’t be able to help himself showing up if he did. He drops them off at the local post-depot in person, for me to pick up.”

“How do you know?”

“Dated August 26th.” He motioned towards the other letters on the table.

She picked it out amongst the others.

_You’ve made me so easy to find you Will. It is almost impossible to resist waiting for you, watching you waiting for me, but perhaps that’s what you hope for._

The hair stood up on the back of Clarice’s neck; despite the heat she suddenly felt cold and resisted the urge to wrap her arms around herself. She’d never received those words because he’d never needed to send them. Lecter knew where she lived, he’s been there. He must have been because…

“Looks like he couldn’t help himself with you.” Will said, rough in his throat but smooth coming off his tongue. If Clarice thought about it, she would have said it sounded a little bitter around the relief.

…he wouldn’t be able to help himself.

“Do you ever wonder why we lived?” The words were forced out between gritted teeth, a question that needed to be said but one that he dreaded getting the answer too. Even after knowing each other for such a short length of time he trusted Clarice to tell him the truth and they both knew that the truth would shake the already fragile foundation of lies he’d built up to make his life just a fraction more bearable.

Will wanted to hear those truths as much as he wanted Hannibal to show up and prove it, even now. In that way him and Clarice were similar also. They feared his reappearance into their lives as much as a part of them still desired it. The truth made them long for it, for a split second, harder than the dread, fear and disgust could ever disguise, and that was terrifying.

“Because he loved us.” The words didn’t feel nearly as uncomfortable in her mouth as she reckons they should have, and Will cringes as they hit his ears.

“Loved?” Will replied, accent suddenly becoming thick with the soft irritation. “No, not loved. He loves us, Starling. Even now. Infatuated.” He punctuated the last word with a grimace twisting the side of his face free from the scars.

For a moment they sat in silence and Clarice wouldn’t say that it was uncomfortable. She felt that they were more friends than they ever would have been if... _they had met under normal circumstance_ she wanted to think, but violently ended her train of thought before she strained their association by further attributing it to him. She focused on the letters in front of her, going back to look at the gentle adoration in the words of the last and not failing to notice how they hadn’t wavered from the first.

She never noticed it with her own letters but she supposed that she would now; the content was different but the wording so similar. Her eyes were still grazing over them when an awkward sound of Will clearing his throat caught her attention. When she looked up he was making a deliberate show of not looking at her. He stood and made his way to the adjoining kitchen and pushed his empty bottle across the side. There was an awful clash of glass before he sighed heavily through his nose. Clarice could tell he was gritting his teeth again.

“Did you tell them about the kiss when you wrote your report?”

Will still his back turned and for that Clarice was overly grateful. If anyone understood what went on between her and Lecter then it was becoming strikingly clear that it was going to be Will Graham. Again, her stomach began to tighten and this time she couldn’t pretend it was anything accept jealousy.

Of course Will knew about the kiss. He knew because he knew Lecter as well as she did; he knew from experience. Nobody else wanted to go down that line of questioning because the thought was as impossible to them as it was as grotesque. That would mean acknowledging that Lecter could feel; she and Will knew that Lecter could feel, they’d both been on the destructive, beautiful end of it.

“No.” She replied, trying to swallow her feelings down with another mouthful of her beer, clearing her voice. “Did you?”

Will gave out another bitter burst of laughter, pushing back the same unwelcome, unrelenting jealousy she was. “Please.” He huffed, turning back to face her he stalked back into the room with another beer and a glass of something that smelt a lot stronger.

 _Why would it matter?_ , she wanted to ask. Will must have read it on her face.

"No doubt someone has an eye on us. Don't want them to think his prodégé and his lover are conspiring."

For a brief moment Clarice wondered whether or not Will was better off believing that the FBI still had an eye on him, whether it was the only thing keeping him from taking the final step back to Hannibal, then her thoughts drifted back to herself and she caught herself wondering if that was the reason she wasn't either. A thought she was happy to disregard as ridiculous suddenly didn't seem so ridiculous; it had always been in the back of her head.

The fish-hook was caught in them deep, that much was obvious from less than twenty minutes in each other’s company; together _he_ was unavoidable and together they were starting to realise just how hard the pull back to him was, but together they were finally realising that they were not alone in the abyss, waiting for the day they could go back.

"We can't keep doing this." Will muttered suddenly, barely a whisper under his breath, eyebrows knitting with it.

It tugged at an understanding in Clarice so deep it knocked the breath out of her. There was no more malice between them than she had expected, just a sympathy rooted in being the only two people they knew of on this planet who had allowed a place in their heads and hearts for a man who they’d let destroy them.

For once she didn’t reply, Will gave her a soft smile in confirmation that he’d seen.

“I’ll get you another beer.”


End file.
